Citizen Kane has long been given a reputation as a landmark in cinema — indeed, it has, at various points, been called the greatest film of all time. Such is the enduring level of regard for writer-director-star Orson Welles’ cinematic masterpiece that critics often invoke the film as a measure of greatness — like Roger Ebert famously pronouncing 2000’s high-school comedy Bring It On “the Citizen Kane of cheerleader movies.”

To mark the 72nd anniversary of the film — which had its world premiere at New York City’s RKO Palace Theater on May 1, 1941 — we’ve put together a small collection of “The Citizen Kane of…” comparisons.

bachelor party movies

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Over the Top — in which Sylvester Stallone, playing a truck driver named Lincoln Hawk, utters the line “I always wanted to be a milk shake” — is, according to several anonymous online critics, the Citizen Kane of …

bad movies

“… As the ads for Movie 43 promised (threatened?), you can’t un-see this thing, so please: Stay away. Even if you might think that sitting through Movie 43 would be an adventure along the lines of experiencing Showgirls or Howard the Duck, you’ll be filled with regret five minutes into this atrocity. There’s camp-fun bad and interestingly horrible bad, and then there’s just awful.

Movie 43 is the Citizen Kane of

awful

* Correction: An earlier version of the story identified the writer of the Movie 43 review as Roger Ebert. It was, in fact, written by Richard Roeper for RogerEbert.com.